| November 10, 2003 Deer Season Update # 1 |
| Well... the opening weekend of the 2003 deer rifle opener is over. It was sure eventful too; I froze my balls off, missed 2 deer, and shot my first deer all in a 2 day span. I spent most of Friday out talking to Rich, before heading to Brent's to spendt he night. That way I would be close to my spot, and not have to worry about oversleeping. He also cooked breakfast, which is incentive enough. Saturday was ungodly fucking cold... it was -14 outside when I got to my stand around 545am. I didn't see deer, but I did get the shit scared out of me by a large owl about 5 minutes after I got into my stand. He flew about 10 feet from my head and I nearly bailed off the stand because I didn't know what the hell was coming at me. The only other thing I saw that morning was some guy who made more noise than a train wreck as he tromped through the trees... I shoulda shot the bastard. I came in pretty early... I couldn't move my fingers or toes by 810am, so I decided to come in. I drove home, took a shower, and then had a nice nap. I headed back to Brent's around 1, and went out with him for the evening sit. We went back with Tim, who is one of Brent's good friends, and an excellent hunter and tracker. I had the fortunate pleasure to hunt with him last season as well, and was looking forward to going out with him again. Brent and his mother in law had gotten deer that morning, and the party as a whole had gotten 5. We went out and picked up Tim around 230 and headed out to his brother's farm, where we were hunting. Man, the deer were thick out there... I missed one from around 75 yards on a perfect shot... both Brent and myself thought I had hit it, but we found nothing after an extensive search later. When Brent was down checking for blood, Tim kicked up another deer toward me, but it was on a full tilt run behind me, and I only got off one crack shot at it. We saw nothing after that, and needless to say I was rather discouraged by the end of the day. We headed back home with nothing that night thanks to my shitty shooting. The next morning proved to be a very memorable day... we picked up Tim around 530 and got out to our spot again by 6. Not long after Brent spotted 4 deer about 250 yards from us on his side of the stand, so he took shots with his .270 across the field. Nothing fell though, and he was pretty pissed to say the least. One of the deer headed in closer to us after the shots though, and we just waited so he'd get close enough for a good shot. Well, he got into thick brush about 50 yards from us; right where we couldn't get any kind of a shot. Then he wouldn't move... no matter what we did. We talked, yelled, and practically played musical buckets (as opposed to chairs up in the deer stand) before they (another one just appeared) walked out from the brush about 35 yards from us. Well, that was my chance... I snapped 2 rounds from my .44Mag into the lead deer. On the second shot hair and blood flew, and Brent said he saw red hanging out... the deer ran about 30 yards and dropped in some brush, while the other one ran across through the trees and into the field. Brent went down to go see if he could find any blood trail on the deer that he shot at... well, it turns out that the deer I shot was one that he actually hit clear across the field. The thing was actually stupid enough to come toward us after being shot. Anyway, as Brent was looking at the trail, a deer came up through some brush next to a tree, but it fell behind it. Turns out that it was the deer I had just shot... it moved about 10 yards and fell down again, so Brent went up to see if it was dead. Well, it wasn't... it jumped up and Brent shot as it ran toward the road off to the west. He followed it as I watched and directed him from the stand. He found it in the ditch still alive, and as he shot to kill it, it jumped up and ran back across the field in front of me on 3 legs. I fired 4 times, and hit him with the last one... he fell in some brush at the end of the woods. I came down out of the stand and finished it off with a shot to the head. I really felt bad that it took us 13 shots to get one little deer, but I did have my first one. After we skinned it, we couldn't believe it had kept running. It had taken 6 bullets, including one in the head, 2 in the neck, and one that had taken out two of its ribs... that was one tough deer; we Christened him "Bambo." That was our party's only deer of the morning. Tim said it sounded like a war zone down at our end of the farm... he called out "is it safe? are you out of bullets?" (we each only had 1 left) as he approached us when we were gutting it. All in all, it was a very lously kill, but it sure makes for a story. I certainly hope that I can manage to 1 shot kill my deer from now on. Didn't get anything Sunday night, but one guy about 100 yards south of us shot 2 northbound deer. He said that we would have seen them in another 5 minutes if he hadn't have shot them. The way we'd been shooting it's probably better that he got them. Not long after that we heard 4 shots from across the east field. Tim had shot one fawn, and his nephew shot 2 does, which put our total up to 6 for the day. Headed back to Brents, ate, and came home after that. Had class today, and the weather was lousy, so I didn't go out. I did go out to Rich's and see how they were doing though.... guess they'd gotten quite a few over the weekend out there too. Not long before I left, we heard shots... his neighbor took down a nice buck not far north of his house. Came home, did a chemistry paper and my laundry tonight. There' no school tomorrow, so I'm going to bed soon so I can get back out into the woods tomorrow. I'll keep you posted as season progresses... it ends this Sunday. |
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| Freezing my balls off opening morning... you try sitting outside perfectly still from 545 to 810 when it's -14 out. |
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| My first deer... yes it's tiny and the picture is horrible.. . He was frozen so I couldn't really position him for a nice picture. |